Passing the Leadership Baton

When I was younger, I was on my school’s track team. One of my favorite events was the relay race. Even if you have never participated, everyone knows the most important part is the handing off of the baton from one runner to the other. A poor handoff can be the difference between winning and losing!

In college ministry, we have some unique circumstances! Our students turnover every four years(or five if we can catch a super senior ;D)! A healthy college ministry loses and gains students every single year. That means that we have to be intentional about discipleship and leadership. If we aren’t careful, we can find ourselves without leaders as our student leadership teams graduate! Much like a relay race, we have to practice passing on responsibility and leadership to each new cycle of students. While not always the easiest task, today I want to talk about a few practical strategies to making those leadership transitions as smooth as possible.

  1. Invest time into potential

There are a million and one resources to teach you how the newest and best methods of discipleship. However, in my experience, the best discipleship I ever received was also the simplest. If there is someone who sticks out to you as having a lot of potential, make it a point to develop a deeper relationship with them.

Take them out to coffee or shoot some hoops weekly. Ask them about their life and their walk with the Lord. Read a book together or walk through some questions in Scripture. If each person on the leadership team picks someone to meet with and invest their time into, you not only develop your own leadership skills, but you create deeper relationships and new leaders in the next class. Those new leaders can then in turn disciple the next class, so on and so forth. The growth and multiplication is simple and natural. Jesus sure knew what he was talking about.

    2. Invite them in

My hope is that each leadership team has a time to meet together to pray and plan for their group. Some of my favorite memories of BASIC were from laughing and praying with my leadership team. We met weekly and the bond that was created was indescribable. An easy way to encourage potential leaders is to invite them into your leadership meetings.

At my school, we had an “open” leadership meeting once a month. This gave people who were interested in leadership a glimpse into what leaders do. It was also a time for them to ask questions and learn more about leadership responsibilities. Most of the time, these open meetings drew in people who were really serious about serving BASIC and often did go on to becoming leadership the next semester.

    3. Give opportunities

The fastest way to figure out someone’s skill set or comfortability in leadership roles is to give them opportunities to show you what they’ve got. As leaders, we sometimes make the mistake of doing everything that needs to get done ourselves. If we shift our mindset, we see all of our tasks as opportunities to teach and raise up. 

You can start off by handing off small tasks like clicking through the slide show or welcoming people to your meeting. Over time, you can hand off bigger tasks or even invite someone to do a task with you. This communicates that not only you believe in this person, but that their time and effort is helpful and valuable. When a person feels useful and appreciated, they are more likely to get invested.

If we think about our ministry like a race, transition periods become incredibly important. If we don’t pass on the baton, then the race cannot continue. The smoother the pass, the more efficient ministry we will be. I hope you enjoyed these tips and can use some of them next semester as your seniors prepare for their own transition! What are some ways that your group has passed the baton well? We would love to hear some of your ideas as well!